The MVUS FMT:October 2007 Announcement

The Midwest VHF/UHF Society
(located in Southwest Ohio) is pleased to announce that the first
annual MVUS Frequency Measuring Test will be held on Saturday,
October 13, 2007. There will be two transmission periods: the first
at 14:30 EDT (1830 UTC), and the second at 21:30 EDT (0130 UTC Sunday).
Transmissions will be on the 80M, 40M, and 30M amateur bands from
Dayton, Ohio under the callsign W8KSE.

Nominal frequencies: 3555, 7055, 10115 KHz, plus or minus QRM. We
will be on all three bands simultaneously.

Power: 1 KW into a vertical on 80 meters, and 100 watts into slopers
or inverted vees on 40 and 30 meters.

Format: Each run will start with a ~3 minute callup, followed by
three key-down periods of just under 10 minutes, with an ID and callup
message in between.

To make things more interesting, there will be a small (<200 Hz)
frequency change between each of the three key-down periods.

A "complete" entry will therefore include 18 measurements -- three
measurements on each of three bands for each of two runs. However,
don't let that daunt you -- we'll accept anything from one measurement
on up.

Submit entries by October 20 to: fmt@mvus.org. Include name, call
(if any), and your measurements in a format that for each measurement
identifies the run (early or late), the band (80, 40, or 30M), and the
transmission period (1, 2, or 3). Also, feel free to include comments
about propagation, your setup, what we did wrong, etc. We'll publish
the official frequencies shortly after that to time-nuts and fmt-nuts,
and make the full results available on a web page as soon as we can.

We have PRIZES! The grand prize, courtesy of TAPR, is your choice
of any TAPR timing product -- TADD-1, TADD-3, Reflock II, Clock-Block,
or FatPPS. Second prize, courtesy of ARRL, is a 2007 Handbook.
Additional prizes, courtesy of MVUS, are other ARRL publications.

However, we have not figured out yet just how to pick the winners;
we want to see what the submissions look like before committing
ourselves. In particular, we hope to figure out a way to take into
account the harder job that more distant stations have compared to those
who are in groundwave range.

Our goal is to transmit a signal known in frequency to parts in 10e-12
(i.e., less than 0.0001 Hz error at 10 MHz) and stable to a similar
level during the course of the transmission. Frequencies will be
measured at the transmitter site with a system capable of microHertz
resolution referenced to a GPS disciplined oscillator, and will also be
monitored by another station in groundwave range that can measure the
frequencies with similar accuracy.

The MVUS Frequency Measuring Test is intended to supplement, not
replace, the ARRL FMT.

Further information will be posted at http://www.febo.com/time-freq/FMT.
You can also send email with questions or comments (or, after the test,
your results!) to "fmt@mvus.org".